With “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” arriving in theaters this weekend, I had a fun interview with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the screenwriters for the film. They’re the writers who gave us “Zombieland” a few years ago, and they’ve become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand writing teams since their horror-comedy became such a hit a few years ago.

Along with discussing their approach to reigniting the franchise in “Retaliation,” we talked about the decision-making process that went into choosing which characters carried over from 2009’s “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and which characters to introduce in this movie. We also talked a bit about their work on the “Deadpool” solo movie that’s been in limbo for several years now.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Movies.com: But what about this movie? How did you decide which characters to use in Retaliation, given the hundreds of characters you had to choose from?

Reese: It was really a case-by-case basis. To be perfectly honest, the reason Destro isn’t a bigger character [in Retaliation] is that it’s so damn expensive to animate his metallic face. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were no-brainers, though – there are certain characters you must include. Having Duke in the movie was a reflection of the fact that we love Channing [Tatum] and he was willing to be in the movie, so Duke made sense. And then suddenly you have these serendipitous moments when you have a character named Roadblock and a star named “The Rock” and it’s not hard to imagine one being like the other, so we just slowly built it out from there. There are some characters we didn’t use in Retaliation that we would’ve liked to, like the Baroness, but we also got to work in some characters that we weren’t sure we would have a chance to, like Jinx and Firefly. It’s a mixed bag. We went with the ones we thought would be the most entertaining.

Wernick: And if we’re fortunate to do a third movie, we’re hoping that the Baroness makes a return.

Bio

Rick Marshall is a professional geek, full-time journalist, occasional photographer, indentured servant to incestuous cats, unwilling party host, speedy talker, obsessive story collector, and most importantly, a dad. This is his personal blog.